A Fond Farewell...

Dear Second Trimester,

It is with a heavy heart that I bid you farewell. Thank you for being so good to me over these past 3 months. When you arrived, you were like a breath of fresh air! You brought back my appetite. You restored my energy and made me excited about being pregnant for the next 6 months.

We have shared so many memorable moments together, from finding out that "it's a girl"(when I was so sure that it was a boy), to feeling that first little flutter in my womb. We've watched my belly grow, almost daily it seems. We've also watched my belly button strangely turn itself inside out. Thank you for not leaving me with any scars(stretch marks) upon your parting - I hope I can say the same thing about Third. :)

Even though you did occasionally bring an unwelcome guest(ie heartburn, gas, lower back pain), I still love you and will always look back at our time together with great fondness.

Oh, and thank you for making our baby cuter and not so alien-like. :) See you in a few years!

Yours Truly,

Michelle

Oh my cuteness!

I think I'm in love...I found these today on Etsy...

BABY LOAFERS!!

and these...

SWEET MARY JANES

Aren't they precious?? Little girl stuff is way too cute!! Too cute for my own good. Simplyjcrochet makes all these fun little booties and also makes adorable beanies to match. Tres chic!

So...does anyone want to teach me how to crochet? :)

What to do...

Well, I got an email today from U of Toledo College of medicine...I've been accepted there as well! Woo Hoo! I am pretty stoked about having multiple acceptances, but I'm afraid it will be difficult to make a decision. My interview visits seem like a blur now that I am actually trying to draw on them to make an educated decision. I'm not complaining, in fact I am overly flattered. Maybe Michelle can make my choice for me?

Rutabaga...

You guessed it, she's the size of a rutabaga this week. Week #25! We've moved on to the vegetables. I clicked the hyperlink for rutabaga on the baby website I visit almost daily (BabyCenter.com, it's awesome!) and this is the picture that came up...

Here she is, our little rutabaga...looks like she even has some hair growing! And it's so nicely styled.

Hopefully our baby is cuter looking than this strange hairy vegetable right now. I always thought it would be cool/borderline creepy if the skin on your belly became translucent when you were pregnant so you could see your baby in there and see what they were up to. Kind of like a fish bowl I guess. I'm always catch myself wondering what she's doing in there, especially when she's super active.

It's funny to me that even though our baby is so small still that I'm this big already! If you check out the size of the rutabaga compared to my belly it doesn't quite match up. I'm sure I've got lots of amniotic fluid that she's swimming around in right now.

This month my check up involved lots of poking with needles...okay not really, just 2, but it seemed like a lot because I'm not a huge fan of needles. I did the glucose test and drank that "yummy" orange drink. The girls I work with kept warning me about how nasty this drink was so I was preparing for the worst. It really isn't that bad. It's carbonated and it basically tastes like Orange Crush, with about 10 times more sugar! You have to drink all 10 oz in 5 minutes, which is quite a bit to chug if you're not used to drinking carbonation. It kind of made my tummy hurt, probably because of the combo of the mass amount of sugar and carbonation. They also gave me a nice little shot in the bum because my blood type is O negative. The doc said everything looked good, the heartbeat sounded good, my size is right on track. I've gained about 18 lbs so far and I read that on average you gain about 11 lbs in the last tri so hopefully that's about how much I gain. I just have a feeling that this belly is going to get HUGE!!!

I'll keep you posted...

We're there...

I've been accepted!!! University of Vermont College of Medicine accepted me to the class of '13 (entering class of '09). I feel so great right now. I can't even describe how good it feels to have this load lifted off of me. There are a few other schools I'm waiting to hear back from, but UVM was at the top of the list. I put a little list of schools on the right of the blog. Thanks for your support everyone!

Oh David...

This is David after some dental work. I don't know the kid, but his dad is awesome for recognizing the need for some video footage.

Craft Night

A new tradition is brewing in the Banbury home. I've always liked to do little projects when time allowed, and since there has been zero snow for some time now we've decided to try out a Craft Night with Hilary and Dennen Frazier. A couple times a month we will be attempting to build/create/destroy something. For the maiden voyage we decided to make concrete light bulb wall hooks.

First we started with a simple incandescent light bulb. Brand does not matter, we prefer cheap.

Next we removed all innards of the light bulb and used a tooth brush to clean out the inner white powder coating.

Dennen and I are mixing the mortar to proper specification. We used mortar because its main component is sand. Concrete uses gravel and there is no way we are going to fit rocks into a bulb. Besides, a 10 lb bag of mortar mix was 2 dolla.

Hilary is filling her bulb with the mortar mix taking special care to shake the bulb allowing for max compaction. When the bulb is almost full we put 3.5 inch long 5/16 lag screws in the bulb and packed mortar around them.

We put the filled bulbs in cups to dry for at leat 72 hours.

After 72 hours we took a handle of a cresent wrench and broke the bulb cast to reveal a pocketed and shiny surfaced mortar bulb.

Isn't she beautiful? Just predrill a hole in a wall and screw it in there. It gives a cool, industrial feel to your home. We are going to get a long piece of wood, paint it black, and screw about four bulbs into it for coat/hat/whatever hooks.

All in all it was a little time consuming with the first 4 bulbs. I decided to modify the method by removing the conical shaped terminus of the light bulb which made a wider hole to work with. The next 4 bulbs should take half the time. It was way fun though, good times with good people. The Fraziers decided to cook dinner as well, which was pretty rychus of them. They made baked, marinated salmon with wild rice and veggies. It was soooo good. Michelle and I were pumped to try something new because neither of us have had salmon since we were kids. The next project is going to be a homemade pneumatic net gun...Zombies beware.